Candidate bribery threatens democracy

Re Wynne takes stand to show she has nothing to hide, Cohn, Sept. 14 Martin Regg Cohn claims the rules in the Ontario Elections Act prohibiting bribery of candidates are “clearly intended to guard against greedy land developers buying off dissidents with handsome bribes, not party leaders ridding themselves of losers.”

That is not at all clear. Canadians have Charter rights to run for office and to vote for candidates. Anyone who tries to interfere with those rights by bribing a candidate to run (or not run so that someone else can win), undermines not only our rights but also our elections and our democracy.

Yes, buying off candidates or would-be candidates has happened a lot in the past across Canada, as has buying off politicians (including to switch parties). That doesn’t mean, as Cohn claims, that no charges should have been laid in the current case in Ontario.

In contrast, the real scandal this case reveals is that police and prosecutors have failed to charge and prosecute people who offered a bribe in the past, and the people who took a bribe.

Let’s hope the current case is the start of stronger enforcement of these key measures that help safeguard our democracy. Canadians deserve no less. Duff Conacher, co-founder, Democracy Watch, Ottawa Conservative Leader Patrick Brown is taking lessons from the Trump campaign. Saying Premier Kathleen Wynne is “on trial” smacks of the refrain “lock her up” used against Hillary Clinton, claims which also proved to be baseless.

As Martin Regg Cohn writes, Brown pounces on any opportunity to malign Wynne, an echo of the attack ads used by Conservatives on many occasions.

This negative approach is tiresome, juvenile and lacking in any substantial policy or imagination for moving the province forward. Unfortunately we’ve seen it all before. Diane Sullivan, Toronto Premier Kathleen Wynne may not have been on trial in the legal sense, but I bet her credibility was. And still is. Alan Pellettier, Scarborough